What we love…

What we’d love to see…

removal of the pop up asking you to rate the app, an “easy mode” for younger kids who may get frustrated in some levels having to multi-task like the Bridge of Screams and Octopus and Battle Ship

Summary

Perfect for Pirate Day or any day – this app from Avokiddo delivers. My son had hours of fun solving the adventures and pretending to be a pirate. Argh Matey!

Our Rating

We ARGH Pirates by Avokiddo is an app for iOS and Android featuring Captain Rose and his crew. The app features a cast of four who are searching for a adventure on the sea. The app involves problem solving via puzzles, battle with sea monsters and digging for burred treasure. Each of the eight levels has a different challenge to solve and a gem to find in order to advance to the next level. Skills practiced within the app include fine motor, problem solving including planning ahead and solving each of the puzzles as well as being prepared for the unexpected. The crew includes: Captain Rose, Claire ‘Long Hair’, Ruprecht ‘The Shovel’ and Zany Granny. During each of the levels a specific task is required in order to advance to the next level.

Level 1: Catch the fish and magical sea bottle to move to the next level

Level 2: Run with Captain Rose and Ruprecht ‘The Shovel’ to solve puzzles along the way. There are a variety of X marks the spot as well as challenges to solve including getting a slingshot and a sword within this level.

Level 3: It’s time to ride the high seas with a pirate ship. You must jump over rocks and in some cases capture cannon balls to shoot through rocks which are too tall to jump over

Level 4: The lost totem, Claire and Ruprecht use the slingshot to shoot down coconuts and put the various characters to sleep and outwitting themwhile attempting to capture the jewel

Level 5: Bridge of Screams, move each of the characters across a bridge while evading the crows flying using only a red balloon! Use your finger to move up or down to avoid the crows

Level 6: It’s the Volcano of 1,000 caves where you go through various volcano’s and move up within the volcano. Those caves are tricky and if you go through the wrong cave you can go upwards or downwards.

Level 7:It’s time to battle the Octopus using the battle ship – what seems to start as a sedate level similar to level 3 requires jumping over rocks, capturing cannon balls then adds in a crazy Octopus which you get rid of by having Ruprecht throw buckets at.

Level 8: This level brings you to the Cave of Treasures where you dig up one last treasure chest before putting your gems to work. This was the hardest level for my son who had trouble following the gem song which required patterning and paying attention to move forward

This is a beautifully illustrated app with top notch illustrations and a fun mystery pirate theme. It kept my son entertained for hours as he sailed the ship and captured the required items to move on to the next level. As a mom, I liked that it just wasn’t an app he could run through quickly but one that required thinking and problem solving to move on to the next level. Language in the app was at a minimum which meant that if you wanted to you could mute the various sounds within the app. I loved all the skills that were practiced in a fun way that didn’t make my kids think that they were learning.
In terms of improvements, I wish there was an “easy mode” option for younger players. My son got frustrated a few times with various levels which required multiple interactions in the same level such as jumping the ship, catching the cannon ball and making sure you shot down the rock all in one fell swoop. In addition, I wish you could turn off the pop up asking you to rate the app. It is protected by the parental gate – but it was a but frustrating for my son who saw it and had to repeat the level.

Perfect for Pirate Day or any day – this app from Avokiddo delivers. My son had hours of fun solving the adventures and pretending to be a pirate. Argh Matey! There are no third party ads and the app is COPPA Compliant. External content is parental gate protected. Be sure to check out the other great Avokiddo apps for kids of all ages!

Screenshots

Screenshots for iPad

NOTE: A fee was received to expedite this review to the top of our waiting list but this payment has not influenced the objectivity of the review and all opinions have been offered honestly.

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What we love…

fun interactive mall that has a number of great activities for kids to play ranging from hair, dress up, cinema, food court and more! Lots of great role play and language activities to describe the scenes.

What we’d love to see…

ability to add photos in the app to the camera roll, also more “boy” themed dress up and characters like a security/police officer

Summary

Overall, this is a super fun addition to the Dr. Panda suite of apps. There are lots of new adventures to play with Dr. Panda friends and my kids spent hours inside the mall.

Our Rating

Get ready to shop until you drop! Dr. Panda Town Mall the newest app from Dr. Panda Games is a free app with IAP for the full game. Inside the mall there are six different locations to visit on three floors including a cinema, pet store, food court, hair salon, clothing store, toy store and even a place to snap a selfie! This app features the traditional Dr. Panda characters and now adds some fun children to the mix. Game play is simple – open ended role play which allows your child to go through the mall picking and choosing from their favorite activities with no rules – just fun! There are sixteen different characters you can choose from within the app which means everyone has a chance for fun! You can even open and close the shops by a simple tap. You can read more reviews of previous Dr. Panda apps here. I also helped my son narrate as he played which let us practice language, naming items and more!

Inside each of the shops at Dr. Panda Mall there are different activities that you can do and when you have finished you can use Dr. Panda money from the ATM to pay for your services, a crane game to try to get a favorite toy (how i wish the real life one was this easy!), a bouncing car, an interactive fountain and lots of fun elements to tap and touch! There are also a wide variety of interactive elements including wrapped gifts (and the ability to wrap you own), a restroom and more!

Cinema: Buy your ticket and head into for a show. The cinema features three different movies and a variety of activities including: getting a drink, snacks at the concession stand, picking up your 3D glasses and even trying on fun costumes while you wait for the movie to start!

Food Court: Hungry for a snack? Simply hop on the escalator up to floor three and you can get your character their favorite snack. Items range from coffee/juice to muffins, rolls, sandwiches, smoothies and more. My younger son loved making his own smoothie.

Pet Store: Head inside the pet store to play with a variety of animals including a hamster, kittens and lizards. You can also buy pet food, carriers for your pet, accessories and more! A favorite of my son was dressing up the animals in the pet shop.

Selfie Snap: No day at the mall is complete without photos. Gather your favorite characters, pets and accessories for a quick photo which you can then post on the photo board.

Costume/Clothing Shop: Head inside and gather your favorite outfits and costumes for dress up! Head inside the dressing room for a quick change for your next destination!

Toy Shop: This is a toy store of any children’s dreams – it features a flying rocket, airplane, ring stack, dinosaur and many more toys! As a parent I personally loved the train. My kids also loved the various dress up options, bouncing balls and musical instruments.Having the performance on stage was a bonus – they especially liked opening and closing the curtains.

I loved the open ended play of this app. My son could spend as much or as little time on each activity as he wanted to. He enjoyed each of the shops and the various games and interactions within. I noticed that each time we played – he would often go back to the hair salon and cinema before heading up to the food court for a snack and a selfie! He also enjoyed the pretend play with various dress up objects and we pretended that we were a variety of Dr. Panda characters as well as a Mom and a child heading to the mall. As a parent I liked the diversity of the characters and variety of dress up clothes. Navigation within the app is straightforward and you can always go to a map to start over in a new clean mall. Inside the parental gate there is the ability to turn on/off sounds and background music as well as promotions.

My son wanted to be able to save the photos to our camera roll – but right now they are just saved within the app and when the board gets full there is no way to save your favorites. My son also asked for additional dress up options like a construction outfit, security/police and a firefighter. My older son asked for a toy building where he could construct his own stuffed animal – we found lots of clothes but he couldn’t make his own animal.

Overall, this is a super fun addition to the Dr. Panda suite of apps. There are lots of new adventures to play with Dr. Panda friends and my kids spent hours inside the mall. A great new addition to your Dr. Panda library. This app is free with in-app purchases for the various stores/games within the app. In app purchases range from $0.99 – $4.99 for all the shops and add ons.

Dr. Panda Town: Mall
by Dr. Panda Ltd

Price: $FREE

Go on a fun-filled shopping spree in Dr. Panda Town: Mall! With so many shops and other things to discover, there are endless stories to be told and adventures to be had.

EXPLORE THE MALLExplore.

NOTE: A fee was received to expedite this review to the top of our waiting list but this payment has not influenced the objectivity of the review and all opinions have been offered honestly.

What we love…

bright interactive app that encourages children to learn a variety of words in English ranging from numbers, colors, shapes, and everyday words.

What we’d love to see…

use of matching numbers to roman numerals for the counting, no timer for some of the games, shorter “test” at the end of the app

Summary

Fun interactive kids app that teaches children numbers and a variety of words in a interactive birthday adventure for Yaya. There is no IAP or advertising.

Our Rating

Yaya Learns English by Kiddies City is a iPad only app in which a young girl named Yaya explores the city in a variety of interactive scenes. Each scene has a variety of activities from finding coins and matching them up by numbers in the train scene, to earning tickets at a theme park and attending a birthday party! The app uses U.K. English, but many words are similar to American English and it is great for kids of all ages. The app features English, German, Spanish, Korean, or Chinese as languages. There are four apps in the series including Yaya learns German, Yaya learns Spanish, Yaya learns Chinese all of which have a similar story just with different languages tied to them. The app features multi step directions, completing a task, finding coins and matching them up, getting the birthday ready and more.

My son loves anything to do with trains – so he really enjoyed putting together the tracks and matching the first letter of the objects (“r” for rainbow and “t” for tree). He really enjoyed trying to make the tracks correct so he could continue within the app. At the birthday party, it was fun for my son to help Yaya decorate by making juice – he chose orange and loved watching the blender make it. He also enjoyed matching the letters to the words and getting stars for finishing each task. The app has beautiful artwork with animations throughout including floating balloons. As a mom, I also liked my kids could touch the speaker icon to hear the word spoken again. The app features numbers from one to ten and thirty seven other words like apple, roller coaster, bridge, house and other words you use everyday in the English language. The narration in the app is well done by a native English speaker. I would suggest this app for kids aged four through about second grade because of the complexity for some of the mini games. I liked that the app had a comprehension test at the end – although 30 questions seemed a bit high – I would prefer if there were ten or so questions that rotated through. My older son especially enjoyed the birthday room and making the cake, blowing up the balloons and sorting the candy items for the favor jars. The app features a gated parental area which includes a glossary of the words including pronunciation, links to social media. This parental area is accessed by touching a number and holding it for three seconds.

In terms of improvements, seeing a number on a coin versus the roman numeral can be confusing for kids who may not have learned that concept yet. I have a 3 year old who loved finding the coins, but had a hard time matching them to the roman numeral because they were not the same. When you successfully complete the numbers, you are presented with a screen which shows the coins – again with numbers and the spelling of the number which is different than how it is presented within the app. Older kids may understand the concept more clearly and be able to execute There are also a number of items within the various screens it would be nice to see an interaction with when you touch them. In the park, my son got frustrated because when you put the kids on the rides you are timed as you answer questions – it would be nice for younger kids if you didn’t have a timer because when time ends you have to start the level again. I would also like to be able to mute the background music – as it can be a bit distracting but when you turn down the sound you lose the narration.

Overall, this is a cute app designed to help kids learn English in a fun and interactive way. It is designed for children who already speak English as well as non native English speakers. The mini games are fun and have good replay opportunities – but younger kids especially can get frustrated when you try the app because of the inconsistencies in the levels of the games. There are no in-app purchases and no advertising contained within the app. This is a fun educational app that will have kids playing over and over again.

by Category:Requirements: Compatible with
Size: 0 MB

$

NOTE: A fee was received to expedite this review to the top of our waiting list but this payment has not influenced the objectivity of the review and all opinions have been offered honestly.

What we love…

Fun easy to use leveled math app that encouraged my son to practice his math skills

What we’d love to see…

ability to test out of content your child may already be familiar with, ability to turn off the sound affects within the app

Summary

I am looking forward to continuing to use the app with my son for his remaining homework assignments before school lets out and during the summer for part of his screen time to ensure that he stays on track with his math skills.

Our Rating

Zap Zap Math – K6 Math Games by Visual Math Interactive Sdn. Bhd. is a universal app for iOS that focuses on #commoncore math skills. The free app with gated in-app purchases (IAP) includes content for children from kindergarten through sixth grade to learn, master and be quizzed on math materials using games. The app itself contains over 150 games and over 180 math subtopics and is common core aligned to the Ontario Curriculum for Mathematics. For purposes of the review, I was given a full user ID and tested using second grade material since that is the grade my older son is in. The premium subscription is $9.99 USD and is charged on an annual basis. For those that purchase the full subscription there is also a web-based dashboard so you can check on your child’s progress.

Skills practiced within the app include: Addition, Subtraction, Fractions, Ratios, Multiplication, Geometry, Coordinates, Measurements, Angles, Time. Each “year” within the app is a full school year’s worth of content which is fantastic for home practice during homework time, for homeschooling families or simply to prevent the “summer slide”.

Within the app, there are four different skill areas to use: training, accuracy, speed, mission. There is no spoken language contained within the app, but there are written directions as well as video tutorials to show you what to do for each of the mini games. After completing problems correctly, the words “good job” or stars are flashed on the screen. After taking the quiz, you are shown the results of your work as well as given a time bonus (if completed faster than allowed) to give you a total score.

Training – this is the area where your child learns the skill and gets a tutorial about how to do it.

Speed Building – the skill itself is learned and now the focus is on completing the task in a faster manner

Mission – this brings all the pieces together when you rocket into outer space with a fun mini game

One of the things we liked was that there was a tutorial for each type of game. This made sure we understood how to play it because it included step by step directions and a sample problem for you to complete. My son in particular enjoyed the hive game as he had to connect different equations together to complete the problem. At the end of each mission, you see your accuracy and score as well as a number of “Z” coins which are in app currency to purchase items. We also liked the wide variety of games and frankly the huge amount of free content available to users without purchasing a subscription. This app really allowed you to “try before you buy”.

In terms of enhancements, it would be nice if there were a way to “test” out of content. My son was familiar in some cases with the content and kept telling me how “boring” it was to have to relearn a skill that he already knew. I also would like to be able to turn off the background sound within the app, my son found the ticking and various noises distracting so we ended up muting our device, but it would be nice if there was an easier way to do it. I’d also like a collaboration space, my son’s math curriculum is very visually based and several times he actually wanted to use the number line or draw out the math problem. You can see the number line in the training mode, but you can’t manipulate it which was something he requested. I would also like to see a parent gated area that contains the rating as well as a way to see the dashboard from my device in a future release.

Above is a screenshot of a sample dashboard that shows what skills each student is practicing along with accuracy, amount of time played, number of attempts. You can also click through to get a more detailed report.

I am looking forward to continuing to use the app with my son for his remaining homework assignments before school lets out and during the summer for part of his screen time to ensure that he stays on track with his math skills. This is a great app to try and see if it works for your family, the $9.99 in app purchase/annually seems affordable for the amount of content contained within the app. There are external links, however, they are parental gated.

Screenshots

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Screenshots for iPad

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NOTE: A fee was received to expedite this review to the top of our waiting list but this payment has not influenced the objectivity of the review and all opinions have been offered honestly.The links in this post may contain affiliate links where The iMums will receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on our link, this helps to support the costs of running this site and we appreciate your support.

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Meet the iMums

The iMums - Amanda, Alison, Mary and Grace - are four mothers from different parts of the world dedicated to informing parents about the best digital stories, educational apps, fun games and technology products available for their children. We also offer the latest news in apps for kids, interesting articles, developer interviews, free apps and regular giveaways! Read more.

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